RIP Lee Elia

[brn623cl]

 

[Deskgrunt50]

Oh, no. Producer of one of everyone's all-time favorite rants.

RIP, Lee.

"**** those ****in' fans who come out here and say they're Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you rippin' every ****in' thing you do. I'll tell you one ****in' thing, I hope we get ****in' hotter than ****, just to stuff it up them 3,000 ****in' people that show up every ****in' day, because if they're the real Chicago ****in' fans, they can kiss my ****in' ass right downtown and PRINT IT.

"They're really, really behind you around here… my ****in' ass. What the **** am I supposed to do, go out there and let my ****in' players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the ****in' nickel-dime people who turn up? The mother****ers don't even work. That's why they're out at the ****in' game. They oughta go out and get a ****in' job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a ****in' living. Eighty-five percent of the ****in' world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A ****in' playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them mother****ers. Rip them ****in' cocksuckers like the ****in' players. we got guys bustin' their ****in' ass, and them ****in' people boo. And that's the Cubs? My players get around here. I haven't seen it this ****in' year. Everybody associated with this organization have been winners their whole ****in' life. Everybody. And the credit is not given in that respect.

"Alright, they don't show because we're 5 and 14… and unfortunately, that's the criteria of them dumb 15 mother****in' percent that come out to day baseball. The other 85 percent are earning a living. I tell you, it'll take more than a 5 and 12 or 5 and 14 to destroy the makeup of this club. I guarantee you that. There's some ****in' pros out there that wanna win. But you're stuck in a ****in' stigma of the ****in' Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap ****. It's unbelievable. It really is. It's a disheartening ****in' situation that we're in right now. Anybody who was associated with the Cub organization four or five years ago that came back and sees the multitude of progress that's been made will understand that if they're baseball people, that 5 and 14 doesn't negate all that work. We got 143 ****in' games left.

"What I'm tryin' to say is don't rip them ****in' guys out there. Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my ****in' ass. But don't rip them ****in' guys 'cause they're givin' everything they can give. And right now they're tryin' to do more than God gave 'em, and that's why we make the simple mistakes. That's exactly why."

 

[MileHigh]

 

[dixiehack]

Did someone start vacuuming the press room at 1:50 in?

 

[UPChip]

I assume this will be a daytime funeral.

 

[dixiehack]

At 71-91, the 1983 Cubs did not in fact start to ****in’ flow.

 

[micropolitan guy]

I assume this will be a daytime funeral.

****ing right.

 

[ChrisLong]

I've posted this before and will again -- one of the biggest misses of my career.
I covered this game against the Dodgers. I worked for a PM paper. The clubhouses at Wrigley were so far apart, so I didn't go into the Cubs' side that day. Got all I needed for a decent day-after Dodgers story, got on the bus and wrote back at the hotel. I had no idea this happened.
There was nothing I could say except I didn't get the story. I don't think I got into any trouble or anything. It's not like I didn't work hard.

 

[MTM]

I've posted this before and will again -- one of the biggest misses of my career.
I covered this game against the Dodgers. I worked for a PM paper. The clubhouses at Wrigley were so far apart, so I didn't go into the Cubs' side that day. Got all I needed for a decent day-after Dodgers story, got on the bus and wrote back at the hotel. I had no idea this happened.
There was nothing I could say except I didn't get the story. I don't think I got into any trouble or anything. It's not like I didn't work hard.

But were you there for the other great profanity laced manager meltdown when Tommy Lasorda was asked his opinion of Kingman's performance?

 

[ChrisLong]

But were you there for the other great profanity laced manager meltdown when Tommy Lasorda was asked his opinion of Kingman's performance?

I have posted here and elsewhere that I personally witnessed at least half of Lasorda's legendary rants.
The Kingman one is the most famous. To recap:
I was not the Dodgers beat writer back then. This was a Mother's Day game and a few days before, the regular beat writer asked for the day off to be with his mom. They asked me if I wanted to cover the game. I had never covered a major league baseball game before. I said yes and immediately called my mom to tell her I was going to be late for Mother's Day. I didn't know how late, of course, as the game went extra innings. Afterward, I was standing right next to Paul Olden when he asked the Kingman question. Weird. Since it was the first MLB game I had ever covered, I didn't know that this was unusual. I quickly figured it out.
I witnessed his farting, belching remembrance when Walter O'Malley died. He was gulping down chili and was encircled by media, all with recording devices. "Walter O'Malley was a wonderful man. He brought baseball to this city and got this stadium .... Hey, there's no ****ing meat in this chili .... He got this stadium built ... " The Bevacqua rant. So many.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

He had a Blumpkin rant that was pretty well known too.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

I covered the Phillies in spring training when Lee was a coach and manager. Very good guy

 

[MileHigh]

Lasorda had many rants. Kingman is the tops.

Paul Olden asked the question. Played endlessly on Jim Healy's 5:30 p.m. show.

 

[UNCGrad]

As a Cubs fan, I've always enjoyed Elia's epic rant.

I've also read so much about how smart and good a baseball guy he really was. I know Jayson Stark has written about that.

 

[wicked]

He had a Blumpkin rant that was pretty well known too.

I searched and couldn't find it, but did find this awesome thread.

Thread 'Tommy Lasorda: 80 and still shoveling bullsh*t'

Sep 22, 2007

Tommy waxing poetic about God, baseball, America and the Dodgers. Give it up Tommy. We all know you're completely full of **** and actually a miserable old cheap man.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070922&content_id=2223603&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

• BYH
• Replies: 75
• Forum: Sports and News

So much gold. Stuff like this is why I've wasted way too much time here over the years.

 

[I Should Coco]

As a Cubs fan, I've always enjoyed Elia's epic rant.

I've also read so much about how smart and good a baseball guy he really was. I know Jayson Stark has written about that.

People forget or can’t believe that Wrigley Field could really be a ghost town in the early 1980s, before the team’s 1984 run and Harry Caray/WGN turning the ball park into a tourist attraction.

I was there during the Lee Elia era, sitting with my Little League team in a deserted upper deck at Wrigley Field. Ran down a foul ball from Larry Bowa hit into an area of completely empty seats.

 

[BTExpress]

I've posted this before and will again -- one of the biggest misses of my career.
I covered this game against the Dodgers. I worked for a PM paper. The clubhouses at Wrigley were so far apart, so I didn't go into the Cubs' side that day. Got all I needed for a decent day-after Dodgers story, got on the bus and wrote back at the hotel. I had no idea this happened.
There was nothing I could say except I didn't get the story. I don't think I got into any trouble or anything. It's not like I didn't work hard.

Let's say you had witnessed the whole thing.

What would a West Coast newspaper have done with it? What did the L.A. papers who heard it do with it? The gold is in the audio. 85% of it is unprintable. And it's the Chicago manager, not the L.A. one.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Lasorda was a **** to me. I went to Lakeland one day to a Dodgers-Tigers game because I didn’t want to deal with all the other reporters in Clearwater. Tommy acted like I was wasting his time and put me off continually until I finally got five minutes. Even then he was short and gruff, not the ebullient Lasorda you would see in front of the cameras. Later on I found out many people had similar Lasorda stories

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Lasorda had many rants. Kingman is the tops.

Paul Olden asked the question. Played endlessly on Jim Healy's 5:30 p.m. show.

I witnessed one in Clearwater. Lasorda was in the middle of his sentence when he spotted Rick Talley of the Chicago Tribune and unloaded on him. Supposedly Talley outed Lasorda’s son and Tommy was not happy. That kinda cut the press availability short

 

[Bubbler]

People forget or can't believe that Wrigley Field could really be a ghost town in the early 1980s, before the team's 1984 run and Harry Caray/WGN turning the ball park into a tourist attraction.

I was there during the Lee Elia era, sitting with my Little League team in a deserted upper deck at Wrigley Field. Ran down a foul ball from Larry Bowa hit into an area of completely empty seats.

Even after ‘84, the early season day games were not exactly sellouts.

My first Wrigley experience was in ‘92, a decidedly un-Wrigley April atmosphere with maybe a couple of grand at the coldest game I’ve ever attended.

My friends and I grabbed seats not far off the dugout because no one was there. Shawn Boskie hit a screamer of a foul ball that caromed off my hand and clanked around empty seats a few sections away.

Baseball-reference says it was 40 degrees with a 15 MPH wind. Froze my ass off. Box score oddity: Kim Batiste already had seven errors in the 15th game of the season? Bring back Steve Jeltz!

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN199204220.shtml